Caesura
by Shun Ren Dan
Summary: Roxas and Xion wade through the borders of friendship to uncover an important maxim: love is found in the moments between.


Roxas wasn't sure when he fell.

All he knew was that one moment he felt like kissing her. As if _not_ kissing her would've been the end of him and that everything he knew bid him to just press his lips to hers and be done with it lest he find himself destroyed at the end of the day.

It began where it always did.

The clocktower over Twilight Town, from which the entire world stretched out like a blanket. The sound of a distant train puttered on and on, accompanied by the subtle melody of humdrum life thriving below. The sky, ablaze, painted the city blood orange, touching everything that spun on beneath it. At the outskirts, a sea of green hills rolled on endless into the distance, untouched by the civilization that they hemmed in like jeans might a waist. It was the same idyllic scene that they always looked out over, but for once, without Axel to guide them through conversation, it all felt a little different.

Things were, firstly, a lot colder than usual. Naturally, to compensate, Xion had scooted a little closer to him than usual and he figured that it had to have started there. With her head resting on his shoulder and her hand in his hand, who could blame him for falling there? Still, something about that answer seemed unsatisfactory. It could've been before that. Maybe after, when she'd let free a contented sigh and made some remark about how Twilight Town was her favorite world.

Or maybe it was the way she faked surprise when Roxas replied, and the wry sarcasm that affected her tone when she insisted that there was quite possibly no way she could've ever figured that out.

"Hey," he said, a little flustered, "I could say the same to you. Where else do you even go?"

"Lots of places," she responded, her eyes fixated on a distant hilltop.

Roxas, his cheek resting on her head, peered down at her for a long time, enjoying the silence. It could've been then that he really slipped. Had he not looked down at her at that moment, he might not've realized it, and so he figured there was no way he could have ever come to the realization that he loved his best friend if he hadn't done that. That made enough sense to him, but there was a bit of a problem with it that he couldn't get around.

It just couldn't have been enough on its own.

If not for the ice cream melting in his gloved hands, the way it tasted on his lips and how much he loved sharing it, there was no way he would've ever even been there in the first place. So surely, sea-salt ice cream was to blame.

But, somehow, he knew that it wasn't the ice cream. It was the people he shared it with that mattered. He brought his popsicle to his lips and tested the theory. Unfortunately, he found it satisfactory enough, and he knew that he didn't love Xion because of the silly (but admittedly delicious) ice cream that they shared.

Kicking his legs out over the ledge, he figured it had to be something else.

The memories they shared. Or the way he felt so comfortable around her that he could have told her anything, if he hadn't already told her almost everything that came to mind. It might've been that she didn't judge him for not knowing anything, but then again, they both judged each other for that already. Half of the fun of knowing her was making fun of the things she didn't know, and he figured that she felt the same way when she got to do the same to him.

Maybe it was that they were both drifters, traveling through the stars on some sort of crash course with the ambiguities of fate.

More likely, it was the little things. The way her eyes lit up when she smiled and the way she snorted when she was laughing at some dumb joke he made. He felt certain that the answer he was looking for was stuffed somewhere between the furtive looks they shared whenever Axel said something crazy, as if they were both staring into some unseen camera that the other person represented. Roxas knew that it had to be there, somewhere, if only he could find the first time they'd done it.

When he tried, however, he came to realize that they'd done it from the start. So it couldn't have been that one thing in particular.

Roxas was so lost in his thoughts that he barely noticed when she adjusted on his shoulder, untangling her fingers from his and wrapping her arms around his arm. That was sort of a lie, though — he noticed every step, and the heart that wasn't supposed to be in his chest leapt when she looked up at him, scrutinizing him for something that he hadn't realized he'd been showing off. For a second, she said nothing, merely looking at him with the sort of frustrated look that one might give a kitten when it ripped up a roll of toilet paper.

"What's got you so thoughtful all the sudden?"

"Uh," he very mystically and elaborately replied. "Not much. Where do you think Axel went?"

"He's probably on a mission."

"Yeah, probably."

She changed the subject back a heartbeat later.

"Are you lying to me?"

Her hair fell around the roundness of her face, framing blue eyes that peered into his soul. He should've known better. Of all the things she knew about him — she knew that he wasn't a roundabout sort of person. He also remembered them talking about Axel's whereabouts as soon as she'd arrived.

His gaze flickered to her lips, full, soft, and then back to the sunset across from them. It was impossible to ignore the way she felt at his side or the tingling in his gut that told him that every second he spent looking away from her was a grave sin.

"Yeah."

She paused at that.

Roxas wondered if she knew.

If Xion, by some strange chance, was thinking the same thing that he was and trying to figure out how to deal with it. Honestly, he was so afraid to ruin what they had that he felt certain he would never have risked saying anything at all. She was his best friend. He thought about her so much that he knew she would've thought him crazy to know even half of it. When he went to other worlds, the first thought on his mind was how she might like it, and the places he wanted to take her when their work with the Organization was done and Kingdom Hearts was freed or used or whatever Xemnas wanted it for was accomplished.

Her fingers clasped tightly onto his bicep and she nuzzled a little closer to him, not yet sure of the things she wanted to say.

What if — what if when she knew, she didn't see him the same? What if he bore his heart to her and laid bare all the little things that made her the apple of his eye and she brushed them aside? Worse, what if she had some sort of weird crush on Axel, and then he had to deal with that?

They sat in silence a little longer.

All of the doubt felt insignificant next to the thought that she might feel the same way.

"Hey," Roxas managed.

Xion lifted her head off of his shoulder again and peered up at him, concern playing in her eyes. Roxas noted the way her lips parted, taking permanent stock of just how cute she looked when she had something on her mind. He could only imagine that she was just as lost as he was in that moment, her feelings mixed up inside of her mind like fifty different shades of paint. Their hearts were Pollock paintings splashed together by circumstance and feelings that neither of them really knew how to work through.

"Yeah?"

Roxas pulled his arm out of her grip. Inch by inch, his fingers found his way to her cheek, messengers of intent. They rested there and waited while he sorted through how he was going to say what he needed to say, how he could find all the right words to really make her see how much she meant to him and exactly how tightly his world revolved around her. At the end of the day, they were just two kids mixed up in something dark and strange and scary, but she made the dark a little easier to bear.

She lifted the weight from his shoulders and took it upon her own. She asked nothing in return. She was kind, funny; she took none of his considerable sass. When he felt angsty, she knew how to cheer him up. When he was overcome by rage she was more than willing to rage alongside him.

He was comfortable around her in a way that he wasn't around anyone else, and in the moments when he felt alone, it was her that he looked to.

She wasn't far from breaking the silence when he kissed her.

Her eyes widened as his closed, caught off guard by the immediacy of it and the shock and the way it all cried havoc in her chest.

Xion's lips were softer than he expected. Her warmth fought off the chill of the cool breeze, put the fire back in the sky beside them while their lips held stiller like bookends. When he finally pulled away from her, his hand lingered on her flush cheeks. He didn't know if her eyes were open the whole time or if they'd closed after a while, but he could see in them that she hadn't quite expected him to kiss her. Or maybe she hadn't expected him to at that moment.

He couldn't be sure.

All he could do for a while was watch her eyes. They flickered down to his lips and then up to his nose, then finally to his eyes.

She brought her knuckles to meet her bottom lip, testing to see if they were still there, would-be heart in her throat.

"I love you," Roxas said, as if she didn't already know that.

He didn't know when he fell, but by the time her lips found his by the second time, he knew it was too late to go back to how things were.

She kissed him once — then twice, three times with such urgency that he felt certain one of them was going to plunge over the side of the clock tower. Her lips tasted like sea-salt ice cream and she smelled faintly of vanilla. When she pulled away for the final time, he fought the urge to pull her back into him and kiss her just once more. As if just one more time would be enough when they both knew it wouldn't have sufficed.

He wanted to kiss her more. Again, again, to hold her against him and kiss her forehead and her cheeks and forget all about the world around them and the machinations they were caught up in.

Roxas wanted her to say something in return. To maybe clarify on her own feelings, but… but she wasn't good at that and neither was he, or he probably would've said something before kissing her at the top of a clocktower. Instead of addressing the sudden feeling between them, she blushed furiously and turned away, separating herself from him a little and staring back out at Twilight Town underfoot.

Roxas brought the remainder of his ice cream to his lips.

The coldness of it helped to ease the warm blush spreading over his face. Never before had he felt more like a child.

When she finally spoke, he expected her to say something else.

"I hate you," she announced.

"What? Why?"

How?

"That wasn't fair," Xion huffed. "That's not how any of this should have happened."

"What do you mean?"

"It should've been, I don't know, on a beach."

"Sand sucks," Roxas shot back, indignant. "Beaches suck."

"Yeah, well, I guess this was fine too."

They settled into another, comfortable silence for a moment. Roxas finished the rest of his ice cream before Xion spoke up again, brushing a lock of wayward hair away from her face and turning to look at him. She held back a smile, or maybe it was just so subtle that he could hardly see it forming on her face. Really, his eyes were elsewhere, locked onto hers as if they might wash him away to somewhere else in an instant.

He held the stick of finished ice cream between his lips.

"I love you, Roxas," she decided. As if he should've already known and as if he were stupid for having taken so long to figure it all out. In that moment, it all felt a little real. He trusted her words and the way she said them.

He didn't know what to say. He wanted to affirm his love for her or to say something sweet, but that wasn't them.

"You couldn't have said that before the sand thing?"

"Nope."

"Of course not," he said."That's such a Xion thing to do."

"That's such a Roxas thing to say."

He punched her in the shoulder. She punched him back.

Then, her head came back to rest on his shoulder a final time, and they bickered back and forth until the next train came around.


End file.
